


Good Will Hunting

by orphan_account



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: And I need to make sure Artemis gets home safe, But it's okay because he uses it for good, F/M, Fix-it fic, I don't want YJ to be done, Roy has a messiah complex, So now that's Roy's problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Reach has been defeated, but the mission isn't over. Artemis is still out there somewhere, discovered by Black Manta before the Team extracted its undercover operatives. </p><p>Roy has never left a man behind before, and he's not about to start now.</p><p>**UNFORTUNATELY, ON SEMI-PERMANENT HIATUS**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Report," Batman said, and for the first time in perhaps his whole life, Nightwing flinched. He cleared his throat and took a steadying breath.  
  
"Aqualad is recovering in the Watchtower medical bay," he began, hands curling into fists at his sides. Nervous wasn't something he did, not around his former mentor. "The Reach bases have been mostly neutralized, Gamma and Theta squads are running clean-up in Indonesia and Norway respectively and should be checking in soon. Black Manta and the majority of the Light...escaped, in the confusion."  
  
Black Canary favored him with an understanding smile. "You kids handled the situation very well. The League will take it from here, Nightwing. We're very proud of you."  
  
Nightwing shifted uncomfortably. "Artemis...was also an undercover operative during the mission. According to Kaldur's report, she was discovered by Black Manta and captured. She...wasn't on any of the ships we raided." He took a slow breath to steady himself. "We're keeping our eyes open, but at this point, she is presumed dead."  
  
Green Arrow took a deep breath, his face contorting in a brief expression of pain. "No one blames you, son. She knew what she was doing."  
  
Nightwing nodded absently. He didn't believe that, but the grief counseling the League would mandate wasn't worth expressing his doubt. "All other information is in my case file on the League mainframe. If you'll excuse me, I need to see to my team."  
  
His comm buzzed as the assembled adults (and no, that's not right, Nightwing's an adult now, he can't push his op off on them anymore) nodded and he turned to leave. "Status report," he said as calmly as he could manage.  
  
"Indonesia's clean. Gamma squad is coming in," Lagaan said. He was uncharacteristically subdued, and Nightwing made a mental note to check in with him in person later.  
  
"Nice job, guys," he said, "head back and hit the showers. You've earned it."  
  
"We'll see you back at the warehouse," Lagaan confirmed, before cutting the transmission. Nightwing paused at the zeta tubes, long enough to let the computer scan his face, before proceeding into the golden glow.  
  
He blinked and found himself in a dark phone box in Steel City. Cautiously, he pushed the door open, looking around before stepping out.  
  
A solid thump of boots hitting the pavement behind him made him stiffen. "Isn't it past your bedtime, kid?"  
  
"Hi, Roy," Nightwing said, rolling his eyes behind his mask.  
  
"No, seriously," Red Arrow said, stepping forward. "You look like got run through a dryer. Have you slept at all?"  
  
"I've been a little busy," Nightwing snapped. He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "Thanks for the assist with Arsenal."  
  
"The kid's a powder keg," Red Arrow agreed, ambling out onto the sidewalk. "He's awesome if you know how to direct the blast, though."  
  
"Technically, 'the kid' is fifteen years older than you," Nightwing said, matching his steps.  
  
"Chronologically, yes. Physiologically, the kid's eight years my kid brother." Red Arrow glanced at as Nightwing out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sensing this isn't a courtesy call. What's up?"  
  
Nightwing sighed. "Artemis was captured by Black Manta while she was undercover," he said, jumping straight to the point. Honesty tasted bitter on his tongue after so long, especially in the face of such a devastating loss. "We...haven't found her yet. We'll keep looking, but we're going to have to call it before long. You know as well as I do what Manta does with his prisoners."  
  
Red Arrow nodded, frowning thoughtfully. "Kaldur made it okay," he asked after a minute.  
  
"Yeah," Nightwing said, shaking himself out of his melancholy thoughts. "He's recovering up on the Watchtower. Aquaman's with him."  
  
"How safe do you think that is?"  
  
Nightwing frowned wearily. "Aquaman's been briefed on the situation. He knows why Kaldur did what he did."  
  
"Dick," Red Arrow said quietly, "knowing why someone does something, and being able to forgive them for it are two very different things. And Atlantean law is tricky. You should keep an eye on them both. Maybe offer Kaldur somewhere shore-side to recover while they get his home situation figured out."  
  
"When did you become the pragmatic one," Nightwing joked weakly.  
  
Red Arrow smiled and swung at Nightwing's arm. "When you decided to go all James Bond on the rest of us and lose your head. You eaten yet tonight?"  
  
"I'll have to take a rain check, I have to go find Lagoon Boy and make sure Gamma Squad got back okay. Any other night I'd take you up on it, but given the circumstances..."  
  
"I understand. Go deal with your hobbits, Boromir," Red Arrow laughed.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Nightwing grumbled, and for a split second it was like the invasion had never happened and he was thirteen again, trying to tug his cape out from under someone's foot. He rolled his eyes and turned to go.  
  
"Nightwing?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Artemis knew what she was doing. And ultimately, it was no one's fault but Black Manta's. You know that."  
  
Nightwing smiled thinly. "Thanks, Red Arrow. Give me a call sometime, we'll have a beer or something."  
  
"Will do. Thanks for dropping by."  
  
Nightwing turned and flipped himself up onto a fire escape in a nearby alley. Behind him, he heard Red Arrow activate his comm unit and call Green Arrow. His chest constricted, and he flipped up onto the roof. The less time he had to ruminate on his failures, the better.

* * *

The door to Oliver's house cracked open before Roy knocked, revealing Dinah's bright blue eyes and smudged mascara. "Hey," she sighed, pulling him into a tight hug. "You heard about Artemis?"  
  
"Yeah, Nightwing came and told me." He carefully extracted himself from her hold, holding her at arm's length. "How's Ollie?"  
  
"He's okay. Grieving, which is to be expected." Dinah ushered him inside and hung his jacket up in the entry way closet. "He's in the living room with...Roy," she said, grimacing at the indication of the original Speedy. "Ollie?"  
  
"Yeah, love?" Oliver shuffled into the doorway, clad in a pair of ancient sweatpants and a grey Stanford athletic t-shirt. His eyes fell on Roy and swelled with anguish. With a quick stride, Roy found himself engulfed in another tight, needy hug, one he felt just a little more hesitant in returning. "I wasn't sure you'd come," Oliver said, releasing his former partner.  
  
"Course I came," Roy scoffed. "How're you doing with everything?"  
  
Oliver took a deep, unsteady breath. He looked shellshocked. "Still processing."  
  
Arsenal appeared in the doorway, his mechanical arm crossed over his chest. "Red," he acknowledged. "I, ah. Thanks for the save."  
  
"Yeah, sure," Roy said, shrugging. "When in doubt, hit the support struts."  
  
Nodding awkwardly, Arsenal leaned against the the wall, looking around. "I...guess you heard."  
  
Roy studied him for a long moment before taking a cautious half-step forward. "You didn't know her," he said carefully. "Don't feel like you have to mourn her the same way we do. No one's asking you to be all broken up about it if you're not."  
  
Arsenal jerked his shoulders in a defensive half-shrug, and Roy couldn't help but wonder if he'd looked that angst-ridden as teenager. "There's beer in the fridge," he said, diving on the non-sequitur. "Want one?"  
  
"Sure," Roy muttered.  
  
Arsenal sauntered off without another word, leaving the two Arrows and Dinah standing in an odd semi-circle around the doorway. "So, Nightwing told you," Dinah said after a while.  
  
"Mm. He's broken up about it."  
  
"Would you be worried? About him?" The question seemed loaded and desperate all at the same time - maybe if she couldn't save Artemis, she could save Nightwing, if only from himself.  
  
Roy shrugged. "Hard to say. I might lock him in a bedroom in his shorts for a week or two, make him rest for a while, but aside from working himself to death, I don't think he'd hurt himself. ...Not like I might, anyway."  
  
Dinah's head snapped up, and Roy felt Oliver stiffen next to him. "Roy," Dinah started, immediately pulling the child-psychologist attitude up and over her grief like a well-worn security blanket.  
  
Roy held a hand up. "I'm okay, I promise. Nothing gut-wrenchingly stupid, not like last time. I know where I'm needed, and it's here."  
  
Oliver placed one large hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Whether it was a show of pride or comfort, or for his own support, Roy didn't know. He leaned into it, just a little, and felt Oliver trembling.  
  
Dinah cleared her throat. "So, how's that little girl of yours," she asked, leading them into the living room. "Did you get a chance to take a look at those daycare centers I sent you?"

* * *

Roy padded out onto the balcony, beer swaying loosely from his calloused fingertips."It's a little cloudy for stargazing," he said, leaning on the wall next to Arsenal. He glanced up at the thick cloud bank hovering overhead, and took a swig from his beer bottle. "Looks like snow," he said conversationally.  
  
Arsenal hummed noncommittally. His arms were crossed on the railing, and he looked out at Star City's expanse of lights with a bored frown. "Artemis," he said finally.  
  
"Yeah? What about her?"  
  
"What was she...y'know." Arsenal looked embarrassed by the question, shoulders hunched and eyes turned away. "What was she like?"  
  
Roy chuckled. "You would've liked her," he said. "She was a badass. When I was looking for you, she kept me from going off the deep end - by force, sometimes. That one knows how to leave a bruise, that's for sure. Kicked my ass more times than I care to admit." He leaned on the railing next to him, bare forearms against the cold brushed steel. "I'm having a hard time believing she's dead."  
  
"I think Dinah's a little better at grief counseling than I am," Arsenal said with an uncomfortable grimace.  
  
"Well, yeah, that could be, too. I have a long and grand personal tradition of self-delusion, and she was -  is - very special to me. But...I don't know. I just have a feeling that she's out there somewhere. Kinda like when people were telling me that you were probably dead. I just had a feeling they were wrong."  
  
Arsenal was quiet for a long moment. "Say she wasn't dead," he said finally. "Say she was still a hostage somewhere, somewhere that didn't even show up on the League grid. What would you do?"  
  
"I'd find her, and bring her home. What I always do."  
  
"I think you have a messiah complex."  
  
Roy took a swig from his bottle. "Probably. But I've never left a man behind, and I'd rather not start now. Not with her."  
  
"Ollie's going to have you committed, if what I heard about you looking for me is anything to go by," Arsenal said, eyebrows tilted up in concern.  
  
"Not if he doesn't know what I'm doing," Roy said, and he shot a meaningful look at Arsenal. "Okay?"  
  
"He won't hear anything from me," Arsenal promised with a small smile. "...Need any help?"  
  
"I'll let you know," Roy said. "Hopefully, it's a rescue mission. I've buried enough people in my life."

* * *

Her cell was unbearably hot and painfully frigid by turns, but always a slimy kind of damp, like being held under some massive sea creature's tongue. She had pulled at the shackles around her wrists for a while, but between the persistent all-over ache from hanging by her wrists against the wall and the untreated lacerations Deathstroke had dealt her oozing blood and God-only-knew what else, staying conscious was a fight in itself.  
  
Bruised purple eyelids forced their way open, looking at the small steel room bathed in red light. A lone chair sat in the middle of the room in front of her, waiting for her interrogator to return. Artemis glared ineffectually at it, trying to maintain enough anger to stay awake.  
  
At first, she had counted seconds, minutes, hours into her captivity. It was something to do, it kept the agonizing slow burn of untreated wounds at bay. But then the first blackout happened, and staying awake was hard enough without trying to figure out what day it was.

The door rasped open, and boots stomped into the cell. Artemis raised her head to the newcomer, and met hard grey-green eyes with her own defiant stare.

"Good morning, my dear," Vandal Savage said with a predatory smile. A familiar black and tan mask followed him into the room, sharp eyes peering into the red-tinged gloom. "What shall we talk about today?"


	2. Chapter 2

Roy woke up with sunlight in his eyes and a warm weight on his chest. Squinting, he looked down and found a head of downy dark auburn hair tucked under his chin, and his arm curled protectively around his daughter's back.  
  
He smiled tiredly and sat up, clutching the sleeping one-year-old to his shoulder. His breath ruffled her hair, and she stirred, fingers fisting in his t-shirt. "Good morning, baby girl," he chuckled, reaching for the blinds to twist them closed. Lian smacked her lips and yawned.  
  
With all the stiffness borne of a night spent on the couch, Roy leveraged himself to his feet and ambled into the kitchen. "How about breakfast, huh," he mumbled to his sleepy charge, pulling the fridge open. He'd remembered to go grocery shopping a few days earlier, at least, before the full reign of chaos had struck with the take-down of the invasion forces. He shifted Lian around to his hip and pulled the milk off the top shelf, murmuring nonsense to her without really thinking about it.  
  
His cell phone rang, muffled by the late morning stillness. Roy shook a handful of Frosted Cheerios out onto the counter and set Lian down in front of the pile. One hand on her back to steady her, he reached for his cell phone and flipped it open. "Harper," he said, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear.

"Hey, Roy," Wally sighed. Roy paused in the middle of pouring a bowl of Cheerios for himself and switched the phone to his other ear.  
  
"Hey, man, how're you holding up," he asked, one eye on Lian as she popped Cheerios in her mouth.  
  
"I'm not," Wally laughed bitterly, his voice rough with lack of sleep. "How are you guys?"  
  
"Oliver's in shock, I think. Arsenal's confused and feeling like he has to pretend to be grieving for the rest of us."  
  
"And you?"  
  
Roy didn't bother dancing around it. "I'm trying to get a couple weeks free from work. I have a lead I want to follow."  
  
"Roy--"  
  
"Don't, Wally," Roy interrupted. "I'm not going to go off the deep end, not like last time. I won't do that to Lian. But I... I know Artemis is out there, and even if I'm wrong, I'm not going to leave her somewhere. I will bring her home, Wally."  
  
Wally sighed. "...I can appreciate that," he said finally. "What's your lead?"  
  
"Jade left her laptop here for a few hours when she was last in the States," Roy said, leaning on the countertop. Lian reached for him, babbling happily, and he made a face at her with a chuckle. "I copied a list of coordinates of underground op centers for InterGang out of it. There are a few places that look pretty promising."  
  
"You need some backup?"  
  
"I thought you were in college," Roy said with a small smile. "But I wouldn't mind having someone trustworthy to watch Lian, if you're up for a little long-term babysitting?"  
  
"Yeah, sure. I like hanging out with her. It's lonely here, anyway."  
  
"I'll let you know when I get time off work," Roy promised. "You talked to Dick lately?"  
  
"I'm not sure I can," Wally muttered.  
  
Roy sighed and shook more cereal or of the box onto the counter. "If nothing else," he said, "ask how Kaldur's doing. I don't know how Aquaman's going to act with him back in the picture, after this clusterfuck, and he could use someone in his corner."  
  
"Yeah," Wally said after a second's thought. "Yeah, I can go do that."  
  
"Wally. Artemis is going to come home. I need you to believe me."  
  
"I want to, Roy," Wally said, his voice pinched and heartbroken. "But I'm not sure I can anymore."

* * *

The skin covering Kaldur's knuckles was gone.  
  
Not just bruised, or skinned - the flesh over them was stripped away, torn and bloody and bruising around the edges, up into the bases of his fingers, the skin of the webbing between them shredded by his  
ordeal.  
  
Mera always said the most important feature of a man - be he sorcerer, scholar, warrior, or king - was his hands. The hands gave and took away, wielded power or compassion as the situation demanded. The hands were the only part of a man that never lied, and if that was true, Kaldur's hands told a sickening tale indeed.  
  
"Kaldur'ahm, my son," Orin sighed, sliding his own hand under and around Kaldur's. The boy's - no, he was a man now, well in his own right - hands were limp and unresponsive, but still warm, the pulse beneath the skin present, if faint. His protégé was still alive. He was home.  
  
The door slid open behind him with a hydraulic hiss. Orin turned, eyebrows lifting at Lagaan hovering in the doorway. "My king," he began, stepping into the room with an unusual hesitance. "I... How is  
he?"  
  
Orin turned back to the hospital bed at his knees. "He hasn't woken yet," he said with an even, gentle calm he certainly didn't feel. "But he is not in pain, I don't believe." _Except that pain I myself have caused._  
  
Lagaan crossed to the other side of the bed and sat down, heaving an anxious sigh. "Neptune's beard," he grumbled under his breath. Orin shot him a stern frown, and Lagaan winced. "Apologies, my king," he muttered, hunching over his bent knees.  
  
"What troubles you," Orin asked, his thumb trailing over the back of Kaldur's hand.  
  
Lagaan was silent for a long moment. "I want to hate him," he confided. "He abandoned us after Tula died. He kidnapped me, and Impulse, and..." He swallowed thickly, eyes falling back to the bed. "And Blue Beetle."  
  
Orin's eyes softened. "Has there been any word?"  
  
Lagaan shook his head. "Robin said he would monitor him and give us an update when there's a change." He glanced up. "Have you heard anything from Atlantis?"  
  
"It was brief, but yes," Orin confirmed. "Posedonis has maintained minimal casualties."  
  
"Queen Mera?"  
  
Orin smiled thinly. "She is safe, as is my son."  
  
Lagaan nodded, visibly relieved. With the Reach's water-based attack vessels, Atlantis was the first line of defense against the invasion, and the threat of losing any of his friends to the initial wave of attack had kept him on edge for the last three days. His shoulders relaxed, and he sat back in his chair, exhaling.  
  
"You may return home, to assist in the rebuilding. If you wish."  
  
He wavered - seeing his loved ones for himself would ease his mind greatly, but Nightwing had said he was needed here. "With all due respect, my king, Nightwing needs a leader for Gamma Squad. I can't  
leave now."  
  
"I thought you hated being assigned to Gamma Squad," Orin said with a small, bemused smile.  
  
"I don't hate it... it's complicated."  
  
"I understand. You feel that your abilities would be better utilized elsewhere."  
  
"And I...don't think I'm ready for anything bigger. I'm not even close to Aqualad's level."  
  
"But you are more skilled than you give yourself credit for."  
  
Lagaan fell silent, and Orin thought if his skin allowed it, he would have colored a deep red. "What will happen to him?"  
  
Orin sighed. His fingers tightened around Kaldur's hand, desperate to incite some kind of reaction. Kaldur lay motionless, completely unaware of the other inhabitants of the room. "I don't know," he admitted, the words heavy and bitter on his tongue.

* * *

"Well, if it isn't my favorite baby bat."  
  
Nightwing turned a little bit, the teasing purr dragging him out of his thoughts. "Hi, Sel," he muttered.  
  
Catwoman flopped onto the edge of the rooftop, her waterproof cat suit slick with the light drizzle soaking the city. "Why so blue, Baby Bird? If the press releases are even halfway accurate, you guys just kicked a major alien invasion off-world. If that's not a reason to break into the wine cellar, I don't know what is."  
  
"You'd break into the wine cellar because it's a Tuesday," Nightwing chuckled.  
  
"True, all true. In my defense, Mondays are a bitch," Catwoman said. "But seriously, what's up? Bats giving you a hard time? Oh, ooh, is it a girl? Or boy, I won't judge."  
  
"My romantic life is, as ever, non-existent. Your concern is touching, though," he said dryly,  his kneecaps pressed into the wet brick bordering the roof. "What about you? Wasn't there a Belgian guy  
somewhere in the picture?"  
  
Catwoman sighed unhappily. "There was," she confirmed.  
  
"...And?"  
  
"And he turned out to be self-centered, arrogant, and a _terrible_ playboy," she said. "No amount of opulent Venetian vacation homes could make up for that set of personality defects."  
  
Nightwing chuckled. "You know, there was a time I was adamant that we'd never have sleepovers, paint each other's nails and talk about crushes."  
  
"And we cured you of that worldview pretty damn quick," she laughed. "You do such lovely French tips, too."  
  
"Years of practice, my friend." Nightwing crossed his forearms on his knees, staring out at the city. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his skin was a couple shades short of ashen.  
  
Catwoman pulled her goggles up on her forehead and squinted at him, frowning. "Kiddo, how long have I known you?"  
  
"Ten years, next month. Why?"  
  
"In all that time, have you ever felt like you couldn't talk to me? I mean, be honest now."  
  
Nightwing sighed. "This is different."  
  
"Different how? Is it League stuff? You know I don't tell anyone anything. Jesus, you Bats are my only friends, who would I tell?"  
  
"I...I killed my best friend, Selena. She's dead and it's my fault and I shouldn't be a hero anymore, what am I still doing here?"  
  
"Oh, honey," she cooed, reaching out to wipe a sheen of rainwater and tears from his face. "You know I have about the fewest answers of anyone on earth. But if there is one thing I know, it's you, Richard Grayson, and I know that you would meet your death before you willingly sent someone you loved to their own. And truth be told, that has always scared me a little, the idea of you sacrificing yourself to the Gods of the Greater Good and me not being there to talk you down from that ledge."  
  
She slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him into a hug. Nightwing curled his arms around her waist, leaning his head against the side of her neck. "If you don't want to do this hero shtick anymore, good for you, that's your choice and I will gladly fight your old man or anyone else about it if you need someone in your corner to get him to let you out. But if this is about capability, or intent, then I'm going to maintain that you're an idiot to think the world isn't a safer place with you out there with the utility belt, okay? You're nineteen. You're doing just fine."  
  
"Wally's never going to talk to me again, Kaldur might die, I've taken a flamethrower to every bridge I have. How is that 'doing just fine'?"  
  
"Okay, Kid Flash's a punk, and do you really care about his opinion? Everything else, the chips fall how they will, and there's not a lot you can do about that." She pushed him away so she could see his face, and ran a gloved hand through his hair. "I don't know details, but I'm sure you did what you had to. It could have been a total Kobayashi Maru - I don't know. I have never known you to act recklessly or without some kind of strategy, and I don't believe it could have happened any other way under the circumstances."  
  
"Did you just make a Star Trek reference regarding my inner emotional crisis?"  
  
Catwoman grinned. "Yes, and you're missing the point. Are you going to be okay?"  
  
Nightwing nodded. She smacked the back of his head. "You are a damn liar, kiddo, and don't think I don't know that. Come on, you can shower at my place. And have you eaten recently? Don't answer that, you'll make me sad." She grabbed his wrists and hauled him to his feet. “I love you, really I do, but you can be such an ass sometimes.”

* * *

 

The cell swam, lines waving like seaweed in a current. Artemis coughed and choked on the blood pooling in her mouth. "I'll ask again," Vandal Savage said calmly, hands clasped behind his back. "Where is your snake of a father hiding?"  
  
 _I don't know_ , she tried to say, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was blood. She coughed and gasped for breath, the sound rattling and wet in the small room. She hadn't heard from her father in years, why would she know anything?  
  
"Honor among thieves," he sneered. His fingers flicked toward Deathstroke. The taller man moved forward, sword tip embedding in her abdomen just above her hip. He twisted it with a sharp flick of his wrist.  
  
Artemis's vision went white for a second. She slumped against the wall, breathing hard through clenched teeth.  
  
"You can't protect him forever, my dear. Why not give him up? You shouldn't have to suffer for him. Tell us where he is, and all this pain is over. You have my word."  
  
Artemis glared at him as the pain subsided to a dull roar in her ears. With all the energy and focus she could muster, she set her aim on Savage's eyes.  
  
A glob of blood and saliva splattered against his left eye.  
  
"You-!" He growled, wiping at his eye. "Go crazy," he said through clenched teeth, and stormed from the room.  
  
Artemis could see the sadistic smile in Deathstroke's posture, before his fist pulled back over his shoulder. She could only turn her head to the side before he struck her cheekbone, and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Just realized I kept writing Deadshot instead of Deathstroke when I was typing this. I always do that--in my defense, they're very similar names. And they act the same, sort of. I swear I was thinking of Deathstroke when I was writing this, though. D:


	3. Chapter 3

"Hey, Dr. Mackowitz," Bart said, waving at the middle-aged man in the lab coat. He shifted the lunch box in his hand and gestured to the door separating the biomedical wing from the rest of the Star Labs building. "Is Robin still with Jaime?"  
  
"Last I looked," Dr. Mackowitz said. His eyes softened sadly. "There's still been no change, I'm afraid."  
  
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting any," Bart sighed. "I'm just taking lunch to Robin."  
  
The man smiled and patted his shoulder. "That's very considerate of you, son. I have a board meeting in five minutes, otherwise I'd walk you up."  
  
"Ah, that's okay, I know where he is," Bart said with an easy shrug. "Thanks, though."  
  
"Sure. Give my best to your granddad for me."  
  
"Will do. See you around." Bart pulled the door open and strolled through the first floor of the medical wing to the elevators. He glanced at the stairwell, and shrugged before hitting the elevator call button. Running in here felt disrespectful, like running in a church, or a tomb.  
  
The elevator deposited him on the third floor, just down the hall from Jaime's room. His sneakers squeaked restlessly on the linoleum as he walked - this was the third pair of sneakers he'd exhausted in as many months, and he longed for the security of his long-suffering uniform boots.  
  
The door was closed, protected by a biometric scanner that kept all but five people out - Robin, Dr. Mackowitz, Guy Gardner, Bart, and Jaime's younger sister Milagro. Whether it was to protect Jaime as he recovered, or to protect his loved ones should the residual influence of the Reach rear its ugly head, Bart didn't know, but pushing his sunglasses up to let the scanner read his iris felt uncomfortably official.  
  
"Hey, Rob," Bart said, pasting a broad, sunny smile into his face. "How's it going?"  
  
Robin looked up from the textbook in his lap. "Bart, hey," he said, slapping the book closed and setting it on a stack of school books on the ground. "I thought you were in Vladivostok with Flash."  
  
"Yeah, like, two days ago. Dude, have you been here the whole time?"  
  
Robin sighed, slumping in his chair. He slid his mirrored sunglasses off and rubbed at his face. "In my defense, it's really easy to lose track of time without a watch."  
  
"What, no super high-powered BatWatch, equipped with a GPS tracker, a fire starter, and satellite internet? I'm surprised, frankly."  
  
"No fire starter, but it does have a lock picking kit." Robin grimaced. "I left it at the Batcave."  
  
Bart laughed and glanced at his own watch. "It's almost noon on the 24th, in case you were wondering."  
  
Robin stared at the hospital bed. "It's already been almost a week," he murmured, hunching over his knees. "Damn."  
  
Bart sat down next to him. "Dr. Mackowitz said there hasn't been any change."  
  
"That's not entirely true," Robin said quietly. "He...he got really bad this morning."  
  
Bart's head snapped up. "And you didn't _call me_ ," he demanded.  
  
"It was two in the morning and I thought you were in Eastern Europe on a League mission," Robin said. "So yeah, I made an executive decision. He's fine now, what difference does it make?"  
  
Bart opened his mouth to yell back, and paused. Robin's face was flushed and pinched, his lower lip split and scabbed over from a combination of dehydration and worry. "I'm sorry, man," he said finally, edging away from the confrontation. "I'm just... I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have jumped down your throat like that."  
  
Robin sat back in his chair. "It's cool," he sighed. "I really hate this."  
  
"Yeah, I hear ya," Bart muttered bitterly. He looked down at the lunchbox he was holding. "Batgirl said to tell you that 'Agent A' sent that for you."  
  
Robin accepted the lunchbox with a tired smile. "What would we do without you," he muttered to the meticulously crafted turkey sandwich swaddled in parchment paper. A note on a sky blue Post-it was tucked underneath a gargantuan chocolate chip cookie, a few lines of archaic, nearly illegible script - _Call your mentor. He worries. -A_ _  
_  
"I can watch him," Bart said abruptly. Robin looked up, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Dude, you haven't been home in nearly a week. I can handle Sleeping Beauty guard duty for a few hours."  
  
Robin wavered. "You sure?"  
  
"Man, you've been sitting here doing what? Homework? It can't be that strenuous."  
  
"I didn't mean it like that. Are you going to be okay alone with him?"  
  
Bart paused, and swallowed thickly, looking at the figure on the hospital bed. Jaime's arms were banded with thick bruises, around his wrists and upper arms like he'd been struggling, fighting to get loose. The ghost pains of armor-clad hands around his neck tangled around him, and he rubbed at his shoulders to drive them off. "Yeah, I'll be fine. If I need anything, I've got my granddad on speed dial. Pun totally intended."  
  
Robin grinned and shook his head. "What is it with you speedsters," he said, pulling the cookie out of his lunch box. "Here, consider it payment for your trouble. I'm going to go walk out to the park across the street and eat my lunch."  
  
"And then you're going home, right?"  
  
Behind his sunglasses, Robin rolled his eyes. "Yes, _Mom_ ," he grumbled good-naturedly, rolling to his feet. "Call if you need anything, alright?"  
  
"Yeah, sure thing." The door shut with an ominous-sounding click behind him, and the room settled into a stifling silence. Bart exhaled as loudly as he could and slouched in his chair. "You probably can't hear a word I'm saying," he said, staring at the sedated, limp teenager in front of him. "But...I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. This is my fault. If I hadn't told you about my stupid future, if I hadn't been so _stupid,_ maybe you wouldn't.... You wouldn't have..."  
  
Jaime's fingers twitched against the blanket, and his head turned to the side. A thin, reedy moan escaped into the room. Bart leaned forward anxiously, catching Jaime's hand in both of his own. "Jaime," he asked hopefully.  
  
His fingers flexed, like he was itching to be let go, but otherwise he didn't react. Bart sighed - Dr. Mackowitz had called it residual nerve stimulus, a product of the fried scarab still affixed to his spine. "Don't mistake it for consciousness," he had said earlier in the week, "it's just an erratic electric pulse into his nervous system. He isn't actually aware of it." Bart still fell for it every single time.  
  
Bart slumped in his chair, his fingers tangled with Jaime's on the blanket. His eyes squeezed shut, his entire body contracting with the force of keeping his tears at bay.

* * *

"I'm busy, Roy," Jade said curtly, tossing her hair away from her ear. Her bare feet were tucked underneath her on the hotel bed, and a room service tray was perched on the duvet next to her open laptop.  
  
"Calm down, I figured as much," her ex-husband's voice said through her cell phone. "I just thought you should know where your daughter's going to be once I get my off-days scheduled."  
  
"Off-days? You've never taken a day off in your life unless you were dying." Jade squinted suspiciously at the TV screen across the room, playing some Czech game show with the sound off. "Oh my god, what did you do."  
  
Roy snorted. "Oh, like you care. And for the record, I haven't _done_ anything. I haven't been on patrol more than ten blocks from the apartment in, like, six months."  
  
"The fact that you _can_ go on patrol within ten blocks of your place at all isn't a selling point, Roy," Jade said pointedly. "And if you're not _dying_ , why are you taking time off?"  
  
"Would you believe me if I told you it was for my mentor's wedding?"  
  
"No," Jade said flatly. "Spill it, Harper."  
  
Roy sighed. "Did you hear about your sister?"  
  
Jade stiffened. "My _sister_ has been dead for nearly a year," she growled.  
  
"No, she hasn't. Nightwing sent her undercover with Aqualad – they faked her death, and she's been Tigress for the last ten months."  
  
Tigress - Aqualad's "right hand", according to her sources. Jade had been looking for a way to take her out for months to get to her sister's killer. If Tigress was really Artemis, her baby sister... She felt sick just thinking about what she might have done. "You're lying," she accused, unfolding herself and climbing off the bed. "There's no way. There were witnesses - the League issued an open statement about her death. They couldn't have faked something that big."  
  
"Many people have underestimated those kids, and it's the last mistake they ever made," Roy cautioned. "If anyone could successfully fake her death, it's Nightwing."  
  
"So why are you telling me this? Seems like if she was really alive, _she'd_ be the one calling me," Jade said bitterly. She paused in front of her floor-to-ceiling view of Ostrava, one hand pressed against the cold glass. The nightclub down the street disappeared behind her middle finger, becoming nothing more than a halo of neon lights in the twilight. "Or does she really hate me that much that she pawned this off on you."  
  
Roy exhaled slowly. "Jade...she was discovered. Before the Team brought their operatives in, Black Manta discovered her identity and took her hostage. We're...still trying to bring her home."  
  
Jade felt her heart constrict. He was lying - Artemis wouldn't get _caught_. Their father had taught them better than that, and besides, she’d been a sneaky little shit for as long as Jade could remember. "If you wanted me to come home, Roy," she snapped, "you could have fucking _asked_ , instead of making up outrageous lies about my sister. Go fuck yourself, asshole." With a frustrated snap, she flipped the satellite phone closed and turned back to the room. She inhaled deeply, and with an outraged yell, she threw the phone against the door with enough force to pop the battery free.  
  
It wasn't true. Her baby sister was still dead, and her _jackass_ of an ex was lying to her - why, she didn't know.  
  
She slumped into the armchair in the corner, knees drawing up to her chest. "Goddammit, Roy," she whispered to the empty room.

* * *

The red light on the camera was distracting. Tye blinked at it, before looking back to the woman seated across the desk. "I'm...sorry, I zoned out. What was the question?"  
  
Black Canary cocked an eyebrow. "I asked how your week was, Tye."  
  
"Right, sorry," he muttered, sinking down in his seat. "It was okay. Talked to my mom for a while."  
  
Her face lifted in an encouraging smile. "How did that go?"  
  
He shrugged defensively. "Okay, I guess."  
  
"How's she doing?"  
  
Tye rolled his eyes. "She spent ten minutes telling me how much she missed me," he grumbled. "Maurice is in jail. Again."  
  
Black Canary folded her hands on the desk. "How do you feel about that?"  
  
"I-I don't know, it's not my problem," he said, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Do I _have_ to feel anything about it?"  
  
"No, but if you do," she said calmly, "I'd like you to feel like this is a safe place to work through that. I know those feelings, and especially with the confusion of figuring out your powers, leaving that unresolved can be very dangerous, to yourself as well as bystanders. Alright?"  
  
His shoulders jerked up toward his ears. "Yeah, whatever."  
  
She smiled gently, leaving the topic alone. "How are you and the other kids getting along?"  
  
"Eduardo's cool. I don't really talk to Virgil, and Asami's ESL, so y'know. That doesn't work so great."  
  
"But no major personality conflicts?"  
  
Tye frowned. "Should there be?"  
  
"No, of course not. But if there ever _is_ an issue, I'd like to know so I can help resolve it without someone getting hurt."  
  
"You know what I'm sick of," Tye said suddenly, anger snapping like a glow stick in the dark. "I'm _sick_ of everyone tiptoeing around us. Telling us we're dangerous, we can't trust ourselves to not hurt people. I'm not a killer, okay? I'm not my dad, and I'm _not_ Maurice. And if that's how the _League_ thinks about us, that we can't be trusted to not hurt someone without being kept as lab rats, then I think we were better off with Luthor."  
  
He stood up, pushing his chair back a few inches, and took a step toward the door. "Tye," Black Canary said, somewhere between cajoling and commanding. "Sit down, please."  
  
"You know, when I first realized what I could do," he said, one hand on the doorknob, "I was kind of excited. I mean, yeah, it freaked me out, but for once in my life, I was bigger. I could stand up for myself. I didn't have to hide behind my granddad or my best friend from Mom's stupid abusive asshole of a boyfriend every time he started smacking me around." He glared at her. "I was stupid, to think my life was going to get better. So far, this _curse_ has given me nothing but trouble."  
  
He wrenched the door open and stomped out. Part of him expected her to follow, or the guards to detain him, but no one stopped him until he rounded the corner into the dorms. Out of habit, he flipped off the camera outside the common room - it had become a ritual, every time he passed the thing, and he had nearly forgotten why he started doing it in the first place.  
  
Virgil was sitting on the couch, a book propped up on his knee. "Hey, that was short. How'd it go," he asked.  
  
Tye grumbled something unintelligible on his way to the mini fridge in the corner. Someone - Eduardo, he suspected - had bootlegged some kind of South American soda into the facility early on after their return, and ever since, strange regional junk food had been appearing in the small kitchenette at random. It wasn't unlike roulette - Tye still regretted getting into some of Asami's stuff - but most of it was good, and his decision to skip breakfast was gnawing at him.  
  
"That bad, huh," Virgil winced. "Man, not looking forward to my session."  
  
A glass soda bottle in hand, Tye flipped himself over the back of the couch opposite Virgil's and stretched out lengthwise across it. He nodded to the book on the other boy's lap. "What's that?"  
  
"The Physics of Electricity," Virgil said. "I figured since I can't finish Mass Effect II without the risk of frying my game system, I might as well take up reading."  
  
"And?"  
  
"There's a reason I'm a C student," Virgil said, pulling a face. "I'm getting maybe every fourth word here."  
  
Tye snorted and took a sip from his bottle. "Ugh, cream soda. I hate cream soda."  
  
"I hear ya, but Eduardo loves the stuff, and whoever's in charge of restocking knows it." Virgil tapped his highlighter against the pages of his book. "I wonder if we could make requests. Sticky notes on the fridge, or something. I'd kill for an Otter Pop. Or, you know, six."  
  
Tye laughed bitterly. "I could always threaten to hurt someone. That seems to make things happen around here."  
  
Virgil sat up, closing his book and setting it on the floor. "You okay, man? You don't look so great."  
  
Tye set his bottle down and rolled over. "Leave me alone, Virgil."  
  
"Dude, I just wanna help-"  
  
"No. You don't," Tye snapped. "No one _ever_ wants to help. Go away, I'm trying to take a nap."

* * *

"She has given us nothing," Vandal Savage growled, stomping down the long, narrow hallway. Every inch of the base was a mouse hole, too-small and claustrophobic, but it was undetectable by satellite and InterGang had so generously allowed them use of the facility free of charge, in exchange for a little run-off personnel. "I should have let Manta kill her when he discovered her. This is pointless."  
  
"Perhaps not," Deathstroke said thoughtfully, a step behind him. The end of his scabbard scraped the wall, and he angled himself to make it stop. His footsteps fell off-beat as a result.  
  
"What do you propose, then? We can't very well torture her more than we have without killing her that way, and she has resisted our efforts thus far surprisingly well."  
  
"We can use her as bait. Daddy Sportsmaster will walk right into our hands if he knows his baby girl's still alive."  
  
Savage paused, his hand on the door to the communication center. "That might work," he muttered.  
  
"Just thinking like a father, sir."


	4. Chapter 4

"Bruce? Bruce, I'm back," Tim called, stepping out of the zeta tubes in the Batcave. His boots whispered on the stone floor as he walked into the massive open area in the center of the Batcave. Part of him expected - hoped - he would remain unanswered, that Bruce was away on the Watchtower or out on patrol with Batgirl or attending to the Wayne Industries business that had piled up in his absence.  
  
The chair in front of the massive bank of computer screens swiveled around to face him. "Hey, Tim," Bruce said, and even though he was still wearing the cowl, Tim could tell by the slumped lines of his shoulders that it was Bruce and not Batman. He grimaced and walked over. Heart-to-heart time.  
  
"I, uh, sorry I haven't been around, I volunteered for Blue Beetle watch duty at Star Labs and I, uh...yeah..."  
  
Bruce smiled and tugged the cowl over his head. "I haven't exactly been twiddling my thumbs without you three around, myself. How's Jaime doing?"  
  
Tim lifted his shoulders with a frustrated scowl. "No change. He had another 'seizure' this morning." He rubbed at his hands, willing away the ghost sensation of wrestling his colleague - his (friend) - to the hospital bed so the nurse could strap him down. He could still hear the tortured screaming right next to his ear, his entire upper body weight pressed down on top of Jaime to keep him from hurting himself.  
  
Bruce frowned and reached out to rest his palm on Tim's upper arm, careful to stay away from anything approaching a grip. "Are you alright," he asked, his eyebrows lifting in a classic lie-to-me-and-Alfred-will-hear-about-it look. Tim swallowed thickly - Alfred's policies on familial honesty were severe, at best.  
  
Tim leaned against the desk, pulling away from Bruce's hand. "No," he said finally. "I just...Dick _lied_ to us. People got hurt. Kaldur hasn't been conscious in nearly a week, Artemis might _be dead_ already, Jaime could die any day now, and that's not even counting the other crap that's happened, and he just... _abandoned_ us to deal with the remains of his stupid mission on our own. How is _that_ fair?"  
  
"Tactically, some of his decisions were unsound," Bruce agreed, "but you know, I've made some awful calls myself, just as you will, given enough experience. There isn't anyone in the League who _hasn't_ made a bad call once or twice." Bruce frowned sympathetically. "For all we may seem infallible, we're only human. Or alien, as the case may be."  
  
"I get that," Tim said, folding his arms. "But why does that give him the right to just _leave_?"  
  
Bruce didn't reply, but he turned to the computer and hit a few keys. On the screen directly over the keyboard, a video screen opened, and a view of an apartment balcony resolved out of the initial static. Tim squinted at it. "Is that...?"  
  
The glass double doors opened, and Dick stepped out onto the balcony in a pair of track pants and an unzipped hoodie. "Just watch," Bruce said. On the screen, a woman in a cherry blossom-pink dressing gown followed him out onto the balcony. Her hug was more maternal than it was romantic, and Dick didn't lean into it as much as he deflated. Even at the distance of the camera, he looked exhausted.  
  
"Is that Selena?"  
  
"Yes, it is. She's been keeping an eye on him for the last day or so." Bruce turned back to Tim. "You are justified in holding him accountable. Everyone needs that, especially in our line of work. But there is a difference between holding him accountable, and holding a grudge, and that's a line you need to be aware of. Fair?"  
  
Grudgingly, Tim nodded. On the screen, Selena waved at the camera before producing a gun out of the pocket of her robe. The visual dissolved into static.  
  
"Really, Selena," Bruce sighed, hitting a key to minimize the screen. "That woman has cost me more wireless cameras in the last few years."  
  
Despite himself, Tim laughed. "Maybe that's a hint you should stop spying on her."  
  
"You're hilarious," Bruce said, spinning around in the chair. He stood and gestured to the bank of glass gear cases across the cave. "Would you tell Alfred I'll be up in a minute. I'm going to shower and change."  
  
"Sure thing," Tim said. He walked to the elevator, hands in the pockets of his jacket, and jumped onto the platform. The pressure sensors that triggered the elevator usually didn't recognize him because he didn't have the sheer muscled bulk of Batman or Nightwing - Dick had assured him that would change, with a little time ("Just let puberty work its magic, it'll happen, kiddo," had been his exact words), but it was a constant sticking point regardless.  
  
The old grandfather clock in the study shifted aside to let him out into the main part of the house. "Alfred," he called, kicking his boots off behind one of the wing back chairs.  
  
"Welcome back, Master Timothy," the butler said from the doorway.  
  
"Hey, um. Thanks for sending me lunch."  
  
"I despair of you and Master Richard having the wherewithal to feed yourselves regularly without my assistance," he answered dryly, standing aside to let Tim into the hall. "Did you pass Master Bruce on your way through the Batcave?"  
  
"Yeah, he said he'll be up in a second. He was going to hit the showers before coming up."  
  
"Very good." Alfred's eyes flicked over Tim with practiced precision, and softened. "There is a fresh batch of cookies in the kitchen, if you would like first crack at it?"  
  
"I really look that bad," he asked, running a hand over his face.  
  
"Nothing a hot meal, a shower, and a few hours' rest couldn't cure," Alfred assured. "And should you need an attentive ear, I am never too busy to listen."  
  
Tim smiled thinly. "Thanks, Alfred. You heard from Dick?"  
  
"Not directly, but Miss Gordon informed me that he sent her a text message asking that she not deploy a search party after him."  
  
"He's staying with Catwoman," Tim offered idly, following the aged butler into the kitchen.  
  
"Is he? I'm not surprised." Alfred set a plate of dark chocolate cookies in front of Tim at the island. "Dick was notorious for running away from home when he was...oh, about ten, if memory serves. Miss Kyle worked out his secret identity rather early on, and she would find him and bring him home with her to keep him out of trouble until she could contact Master Bruce. Eventually, he started cutting out the middle man and running away directly to her. They have been extraordinarily close these last ten years."  
  
"Ten years," Tim repeated. "He's been on a safe house basis with _Catwoman_ for a _decade_."  
  
Alfred nodded, as if that was all there was to it, and went back to preparing ingredients for soup. "Though Miss Kyle's activities are...unsavory, at times, she has a good heart, I believe. And anyone who is willing to expend the energy to keep the four of you whole and hale is certainly no enemy of mine."

* * *

_The control room of the Bioship was bathed in an eerie red glow, far from the usual warm light-shining through-skin feeling. Wally gripped the arms of his seat, staring through the front of the ship at the remains of one of Black Manta's cruisers floating in the icy waters of the Bering Sea with equal parts horror and vengeful anger._   
  
_"She wasn't on the ship, chum," Lagoon Boy said gently, one webbed hand reaching out to squeeze Wally's shoulder. "No one was. They evacuated before we got here."_   
  
_"And that's supposed to make me feel better? You heard Kaldur back on the Watchtower. She could be dead already, and every minute they have her just decreases her odds."_   
  
_Lagoon Boy's face hardened, just a little, as he let go and stepped back. "You don't have to remind me what's at stake," he said coldly. "You're not the only one here who's looking for someone, you know."_   
  
_Wally turned back to the window of the Bioship, jaw clenched to keep himself from saying something he might regret later. His eyes widened as he registered what was floating in front of the ship - Artemis's bruised and bloated body, eyes closed and hands outstretched toward him in the current._   


_Her eyes snapped open, solid white and unseeing. Her mouth opened and moved in some sick parody of speech. Through the hull of the Bioship, he could hear her voice, distorted by the water.  
  
"Save me... stop...me..."  
_  
Wally sat up with a strangled gasp, the blankets pooling around his hips. The bedroom was quiet, overly warm as usual, draped with comforting shadows in blue and brown. His hands were vibrating, clutching the blanket with vicious desperation. He emptied his lungs and breathed in, counting _one... two... three..._ in his head and holding his breath for another three beats, before exhaling slowly enough to count to six at the same tempo. In the back of his mind, he could hear Artemis's instruction _("Easy, now... Count in your head -_ _one...two...three... just like that, good job..."_ ), and his shoulders trembled with the memory of her fingertips gliding over his back.  
  
When he couldn't feel himself shaking anymore, he reached for the lamp on the bedside table and grabbed his phone - 2:18am,  the lock screen displayed, over a picture of Artemis on a family trip to the Grand Canyon. She was laughing and flipping him off with one hand, her other hand tugging a souvenir baseball cap down over her eyes. Bile rising in his throat, Wally unlocked his phone and navigated to his running conversation with Dick. _You up?_  
  
A few seconds later, his phone vibrated in his palm. _Always. Why are_ _you? It's two am there._  
  
 _Can't sleep. Didn't know anyone who'd still be up._  
  
 _Want me to come over?_  
  
Wally stared at his phone. The conversation wouldn't have been unheard of when they were in high school, when Dick spent as many nights at the West house as he did at the Wayne manor, and Wally ran the interstate route between Keystone and Gotham at least two nights a week. But now, after everything that had happened...  
  
 _Would you mind?_  
  
Wally waited, fingers tight against the edges of his phone case. After some - well, let's be real _, all_ \- of the things he'd said, he wouldn't blame Dick in the least if he said no, but the apartment was too big and too quiet, and Wally was drowning in the silence.  
  
 _Give me fifteen minutes_.  
  
He stared at the lit screen in his palm, and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Okay," he muttered, tossing the blanket off his legs and easing off his side of the queen mattress. One hand snagged a t-shirt out of the hamper in the corner, and he tugged it on as he stumbled down the hall to the kitchen.  
  
The coffee can was nearly empty, and in a perversely hopeful way, Wally was grateful. Artemis was a Grade A coffee snob, and she would be mortified to find that Folger 's had ever tainted her beloved coffee maker. But Wally was a simplistic shopper, and without her influence to add Bolivian Dark Roast coffee or the most exotic fruit the produce department had to offer to the cart, he'd retreated to the basic necessities of his mother's shopping list. Wally dumped the last of the grounds into a filter and pitched the can across the kitchen into the trashcan.  
  
True to his word, fifteen minutes and one cup of coffee later, Dick knocked on the door. Wally hoisted himself off the couch and shuffled to answer it.  
  
Dick took a hesitant step through the open doorway and shrugged out of his hoodie. "Hey, how're you doing?"  
  
"Not so great," Wally admitted. He glanced down at his nearly-empty mug and rolled his shoulders. "Coffee?"  
  
"Please," Dick said, following him into the kitchen.  
  
"How's Kaldur," Wally asked, grabbing a second mug and filling then both nearly to the top.  
  
"He's okay. Dr. Thompson thinks they're going to try to wean him off the painkillers, get him conscious for longer periods of time pretty soon. Thank you."  
  
Wally watched Dick set the mug on the table and pour an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee. "Any bead on Aquaman?"  
  
"Roy talked to you, I take it," Dick muttered, and he sounded just a little bitter.  
  
"Why wouldn't he? Roy's just as much my friend as he is yours, you don't get to police when we talk to each other."  
  
"No, I... I didn't mean it like that." Dick sighed and covered his face with his hands. "You shouldn't forgive me," he said after a long stranglehold of a silence, his voice strained like he was fighting some powerful emotion back. "I know Roy probably tried to convince you to, I don't know, talk about it and we could be friends again just like that, but... You have every reason to hate me. I killed Artemis, I lied to everyone, you... Please, for the love of God, do the sensible thing and _don't forgive me_."  
  
"Dude, don't say that," Wally said. "Until I see a body, she's not dead. Not to me."  
  
Dick grimaced. "Wally..."  
  
"Roy said he had a lead. He's trying to get some time off so he can go look."  
  
"Are you kidding me," Dick groaned. "This is going to turn into another Speedy, isn't it."  
  
"I don't know," Wally said, resting his forearms on the table. "But...He's got Lian to think about now. I doubt he'd go running off for an indeterminate amount of time and leave her to be picked up by Cheshire."  
  
"That's still weird to me," Dick muttered. "Did he tell you what his lead was?"  
  
"Something about InterGang op bases. He wasn't exactly overwhelmingly specific."  
  
"Fantastic." Dick took a long, contemplative sip of his coffee. "On a scale of Kaldur to Conner, how pissed do you think he'd be if I chipped him?"  
  
"Barbara," Wally said flatly, and Dick winced.  
  
"Yeah, fair point."  
  
"Besides, Roy's a big boy now, and - as much as we might hate to think about it - he was literally created to do this. You can't spare team resources, and I wouldn't even know where to start, myself. Let's face it, he's probably our best shot here. _Her_ best shot."  
  
"I know," Dick said reluctantly. "I just don't want him going off the deep end like last time."  
  
"I hate to say it, but what we saw probably wasn't even close to the deep end. Artemis was in Steel City at least once a week knocking some sense into him. It probably could've gotten so much worse."  
  
"Man, isn't that a scary thought."  
  
Wally drained his coffee cup. "Dick...I don't... I..." He sighed, the weight of it pushing his shoulders closer to the table top. "I'm sorry," he said finally, "I said some... _really_ nasty things to you, and...I can't lose you too. I've already lost too much - I don't think I could handle that."  
  
"We've both been stressed out," Dick allowed. "Agree to not hate each other for the time being?"  
  
"Sounds fair," Wally said with a thin smile. "How's the Team?"  
  
"Shaky. You heard about Jaime, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Dr. Mackowitz is heading his case team, right?"  
  
Dick nodded. "You know him?"  
  
"He's a friend of Barry's. Helped me out with a science fair project when I was in middle school. He's a good guy."  
  
"That makes me feel better, then." Dick scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yet another thing I should've seen coming and _didn't_. Green Beetle seemed fishy to begin with."  
  
"Dude, you're not God," Wally chided. "Seriously. You. Are not. God. Say it with me."  
  
"I am not God," Dick repeated obediently, a small smile tugging on his mouth.  
  
"And as such, you should not hold yourself to God-like standards. You wanna watch Mythbusters with me?"  
  
Dick chuckled. "As long as I don't have to remind you what "Don't try this at home" means, sure."

* * *

"Rose? It's Jade."  
  
"And it's also two am. I thought you were out of the hard gigs?" Rose grinned into her cell phone. "Motherhood isn't all it's cracked up to be?"  
  
"Shut up, Rosie," Jade grumbled, and Rose flinched.  
  
"Don't call me that."  
  
"Fine, fine. Do you remember my little sister?"  
  
"Artie? Little blond thing, woulda been jailbait if she wasn't so goddamn mean? Sure do."  
  
Jade laughed bitterly. "She died."  
  
Rose faltered on the top of the shipping container she had jumped onto. "Shit, Jade, I'm--"  
  
"Save it. I need a favor. My ex apparently has intel that she isn't dead. Or, at least, that she didn't die at the launch pad. He says that Black Manta discovered her undercover, and that's the last her _team_ heard of her."  
  
A quick burst of angry-sounding Chinese, followed by an equally terse rattle of machine gun fire, ricocheted behind her on the ground. "Hang on," she said, fumbling for her earpiece in her bag. She slipped it on and connected the Bluetooth. "Still there?"  
  
"Yeah. Are you busy?"  
  
"No, god no. Standard search-and-snatch, I just have gunfire on my seven o'clock." Rose shoved her phone into her coat pocket and took off running. "So, your ex has intel?"  
  
"I don't know _what_ he has," Jade said, bitter and frustrated. "But you have an in with the Light. Can you--"  
  
"No, no, and _no_." She hopped into a particularly thick shadow between two containers and settled down to wait. "I am not going to try to bullshit my asshole dad to find out if Little Miss Bites-A-Lot is even still among the living. There is no one in the world I love that much, and even if there was, you wouldn't even come close to making that list."  
  
"I'm just asking for confirmation, not a rescue party." Jade exhaled slowly, and Rose could hear her counting under her breath. "Name your price. Anything I can give."  
  
Rose stayed quiet. There were very few reasons Jade would put herself in a position where she wasn't holding all the cards - and if there was one thing Rose trusted, it was desperation. "Alright, I don't have a job the next couple of weeks. I'll see what I can dig up, okay?"

"I owe you, Rose," Jade said, and under the permanent veneer of purring sarcasm, Rose could hear her tired, shaky gratitude. "Seriously. Anything I can get my hands on."  
  
"I'll let you know," Rose said, as non-committally as possible. "I can't make any promises, I'm not getting myself killed for a little bit of professional gossip."  
  
"Don't expect you to. Whatever you can find is good with me."  
  
Rose nodded absently, trying to plan out how she'd go about infiltrating her father's security. "Was that all you needed?"  
  
"Oh, before I forget. That pretty thing you've been hunting for since we were partners? You might try looking at that fabulous old castle we stayed at while we were in Bavaria."  
  
Rose grinned. "You sure know how to charm a girl, sweetheart."  
  
"Years of practice. Best of luck."  
  
Gunfire pounded the metal of the shipping containers, uncomfortably close. Rose gathered herself into a tight spring of muscle, ready to bolt. "Same to you, dear. I'll call you when I have something."

* * *

The man was hardly the picture of criminal usefulness, his beer gut protruding over the waistband of his worn-out jeans and a dirty, greasy scruff of a beard covering the lower half of his face. But for their purposes, he'd do just as well as any low-level member of InterGang's community of freelancers - Deathstroke didn't mind either way.  
  
"Where is Sportsmaster," he demanded, slamming the fifty-something bayou resident into the wall of the chop shop.  
  
"I don't know nothin'," the man howled, his teeth stained an unsightly pink with blood. "I don't, honest!"  
  
"You wanna tell that to my boss," Deathstroke growled. Secretly, he was having the time of his life hamming it up - torturing unresponsive little girls got boring and repetitive very quickly. "Do you?"  
  
"Look, man," he panted, pushing himself up off the concrete floor on shaking arms, "you wanna find someone, you talk to Whisper. She's in the pen, but she's got visitation privileges, I hear. She knows everyone who's anyone, so they say."  
  
"You don't say," Deathstroke said, pretending to be contemplative. That might be another way to get his message out, if she had visitors frequently enough. He picked the man up by his stained white t-shirt and held him up off the ground. "You tell your bosses that Deathstroke is looking for Sportsmaster, and if he doesn't find him very soon, things are going to get messy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: It has been literal ages since I've touched any Teen Titans comics, so Rose Wilson is pretty much a canon name on an OC, I guess. Oh well, I guess we could say the same for all of the YJ canon characters, and Rose isn't going to have a fantastically huge role, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this last episode, this fic has strayed officially into Non-Canon Compliant territory. Oh well, like I care. :)

"You're going to be good for Wally, right?"  
  
Lian giggled. "No!"  
  
Roy smiled and hoisted her on his hip. Her backpack was slung over his shoulder - his quiver already sat in the trunk of his car, along with his other gear. "You're a little shit, you know that? I love you, really I do, but you are a little shit."  
  
She giggled and headbutted his shoulder affectionately as he carried her out the door. With his free hand, Roy locked the door and dug for his cell phone. (I'll meet you guys by the zeta tube, 14th and Raymond), Wally's last text read. "Let's go meet Wally," he told Lian as they stepped into the elevator.  
  
True to his word, Wally was loitering outside the Starbucks just around the corner from the zeta tube, coffee cup in hand, when he pulled up. "Hey," he called as Roy got out of the car.  
  
"You ready for this," Roy said, popping the trunk open and pulling a bright green backpack out of the mess of equipment.  
  
Wally had the backseat open and was unbuckling Lian's car seat when Roy walked back around the car. "We'll be okay," Wally assured, hoisting Lian onto his hip. "Lots of Disney movies and mac 'n' cheese for two weeks. It'll be fun."  
  
"Call me if anything happens, anyway," Roy said, handing over the backpack. "I think I got everything she's going to need, but there's a copy of my house key in the front pocket if I did forget anything. There's a list of phone numbers in there too, if you need to get a hold of anyone. Y'know, Dinah, Ollie, Jade – I actually have like, three numbers for her on there, just try until you find one that works - and that's probably an old list, so if Artemis's number's on there, just ignore it, that's for my usual sitter if I happened to be out later than I thought I was going to be. And there should be a few notes on the back of the list, just like things like general bedtime, things like that."  
  
Wally grinned. "Alright, Mom," he teased, slinging the backpack over his shoulder. "You sure you didn't need a second pair of hands? Dick said he'd come help out if you wanted him to."  
  
"Oh, so you did talk to him?  
  
"Yeah, he came over a couple nights ago. We talked about you losing it and going off the deep end." Roy rolled his eyes and Wally snickered. "Calm down, I'm just kidding. We trust you."  
  
"But you're back on speaking terms again?"  
  
"Yeah, back on speaking terms. And both of us can come help if you need us to."  
  
"I've got Arsenal on standby, but thank you. If things go south, you guys are the first ones I call." Roy kissed Lian's forehead and ran a hand over her downy head. "Be good for Wally, kiddo. I love you."  
  
"Love'oo," she said, tiny fingers waving at him. "B'good."  
  
He grinned. "I will. Thanks for taking her, Wally."  
  
Wally smiled thinly. "Bring her home, okay?"  
  
"Planning on it. We'll get her back, I promise."

* * *

The first time  Kaldur left the water, he was disoriented by the sudden sharpness of sounds. Sound moved through water slowly, edges softened by the tide surrounding them. The sudden clarity and volume was dizzying, and the memory still made his head spin.  
  
As he split his time between the water and the shore, he'd learned to adjust fairly quickly, and the change in perception became as natural as taking a deep breath. But on occasion, when he had spent an abnormal amount of time either place, the transition still caught him by surprise, and he had to pause for a moment to regain his bearings.  
  
 _"...aldur? Can you hear me?"  
_  
The voice was muffled, like it was above the surface of the water. It sounded familiar, someone he knew, and wanted to answer, but the water pressure was holding him under, and it shouldn't have been enough to make swimming upward this _hard_ , not this close to the surface.  
  
 _"Kaldur'ahm..."_  
  
The new voice was vaguely more authoritative, and Kaldur could feel that he was _meant_ to respond. He took a deep breath and forced his way toward the surface of the water.  
  
"I don't think-- Kal?"  
  
The light was dimmed, mercifully, and further blocked by Nightwing's face in front him. Kaldur blinked to clear his vision and tried to sit up.  
  
A hand on his shoulder stopped him. "Be still, Kaldur'ahm," King Orin said, his arm stretched across Kaldur's chest to keep him down. His blue eyes were warm and anxious, and when Kaldur showed no resistance he drew back like he'd overstepped some important boundary. "How do you feel?"  
  
"I... Sore," he said finally, his voice rough. "Very...sore."  
  
Nightwing chuckled. "I bet. You took a pretty hard hit, you've been out for over a week."  
  
"Artemis," he asked, struggling against the overwhelming urge to panic. She was okay, they got her out, she _had_ to be--  
  
"We're still looking," Nightwing said quietly, and even under the mask he looked guilt-stricken. "We haven't found her on any of the cruisers we've raided."  
  
Kaldur deflated visibly. He knew his father - this long after her capture, Artemis's chances were slim. "The Team?"  
  
"Took some heavy damage, they're inactive pending evaluations,” Nightwing answered a bit too clinically, and the guilt was back, painting ugly shadows across his face. "No one died, though, so. Small mercies."  
  
Kaldur nodded absently. "We succeeded?"  
  
"As much as we ever could have," Nightwing said with a thin, bitter smile, glancing at King Orin.  
  
Kaldur took the hint and shifted into a more upright position. His muscles strained against the unaccustomed use, and he collapsed against the pillows again as his visitors reached for him. "I believe my king would like to speak with me alone?"  
  
"I would," King Orin sighed.  
  
Nightwing nodded. "Well. I need to check in at the Batcave, so I'll be in the comm center if you need me." As he passed the older Atlantean on his way to the door, he paused. "Dr. Thompson said no more than twenty minutes," he said.  
  
"Of course," King Orin said, watching him leave. The door hissed shut behind him, and he sighed. "Kaldur'ahm, my son," he began, fingers twisting together on his knees.  
  
"Apologies, my king," Kaldur muttered.  
  
Before he could continue apologizing, Orin smiled, a breathy chuckle escaping him. "It took me a long while to learn when you were young, but I finally figured out that whenever you said that to me, it was typically on the heels of something you weren't sorry for in the least."  
  
"I am always sorry to disappoint you," Kaldur said earnestly, "but...there are times when your opinion cannot be my first thought in deciding on a course of action."  
  
"And rightly so." Orin exhaled slowly. "Why didn't you just tell me? Tell someone?"  
  
"We had to, to quote Artemis, sell it. If you had known of our ruse, you might not have acted in the severity we required." Kaldur rolled his shoulders to try to relieve some of the tension. "I wanted to let you know somehow," he said quietly. "I looked for some way to get a message to Posedonis, so at least Mera would know... After Malina Island, I doubted that you would be receptive to hearing from me at all."  
  
"I would have given anything to know that wasn't you."  
  
"But it was me." And Kaldur was so tired of knowing that, of knowing his own body count, lives that he had willingly ended for this mission. The ends could never justify the means, no matter how many lives he'd saved in the long run. He closed his eyes and willed the crippling sensation of failure back. "It was my choice to accept the mission. I will accept the judgment of Atlantean law for my crimes as well."  
  
Orin leaned forward, frowning urgently. "You are a hero, Kaldur'ahm," he insisted.  
  
"That may have once been true, but I fear recent events have removed me from such standing. As much as I would like to say otherwise, I am no longer fit to be called your protégé."

* * *

"Nightwing, good to see you among the living," Wonder Woman greeted him with an easy smile as he stepped into the comm center. "My sister said they hadn't heard from you for a few days, she was worried."  
  
Nightwing smiled thinly and took a seat at an open terminal. "Just following up with an outside operative," he answered, removing his glove and pressing his thumb to the scanner. "Kind of had to leave the comm unit at home to ditch the GPS tracker." He pulled up the video comm link with the Batcave and tapped his fingertips on the edge of the keyboard as the computer accepted the request. "Have you two had a chance to talk since the invasion?"  
  
"Not in so many words. We have both been otherwise occupied. However, tonight being Movie Night, I sense there will be a heart-to-heart in our future." She closed out her mission report and stood to leave. "Give my best to your mentor," she said over her shoulder."  
  
"Thank you, Diana," Batman said from the screen. She grinned and waved before striding from the room. "Nightwing. How's Selena?"  
  
Nightwing grimaced. "She's alright. Sorry about vanishing."  
  
"After this many years, I know to check with her before going out looking for you myself. Thanks for at least telling Batgirl. Any update on the team?"  
  
"They're inactive as of three days ago. Lagoon Boy is assisting rebuilding in Atlantis, Miss Martian and Beast Boy are with Martian Manhunter, and the rest of the team are with their mentors or..." Nightwing swallowed and exhaled a shaky excuse for a sigh. "Are otherwise occupied."  
  
"No word on Blue Beetle," Batman noted, somewhere between a statement and a question. "Robin just left to replace Impulse at Star Labs."  
  
"I'll go send him home as soon as I'm done here," Nightwing said. Beneath the cowl, Batman's eyes narrowed.  
  
"You'll return to base and give me a _detailed_ summary of your mission," he countered, leaving no room for argument. "Am I perfectly clear?"  
  
Nightwing sighed. "Yes, sir," he muttered, slumping in the chair. Secretly, he was glad for the extra reprieve, and he wondered what that said about his ability to lead. "Any word on the Light?"  
  
"No, but it's a League top priority."  
  
"Kaldur's awake. I'll add his full report to the case file in a day or so."  
  
"Let him get back on his feet. I expect you back in Gotham by 21-hundred hours."  
  
Nightwing glanced at the click on the screen and nearly rolled his eyes. If course he'd set a curfew, and a tight one at that. He only had fifteen minutes to make it back to the Batcave. "Alright, I'm on my way."  
  
Batman cracked a fraction of a smile. "See you at home."  
  
 _Home_ , Nightwing thought bitterly as the screen reverted to the default blue. Did he even have that much anymore?

* * *

"Well. A completely voluntary visit from my daughter." Deathstroke folded his arms. "And I'm not even dead. What gives?"

Rose swung down into the control room from the open air vent. "What, a girl can't give her old man a visit?"  
  
"Not you," he scoffed, removing his mask. "Frankly, I'm more impressed you found me, than anything else."  
  
"Oh, please. As if I don't always know where you are," she scoffed. She perched herself on the edge of the table in front of him. "Word on the street is you've got a fun hostage." She watched his face, pathetically grateful for the lack of a variety between them. He was always harder to read behind the mask.  
  
His lips tilted in a harsh, lopsided smirk. "Well. Either you keep odd company, or that worked better than I hoped it would."  
  
"What's to say it isn't a little of both?"  
  
"Mm." He regarded her with amused interest. "And what concern is my hostage to you?"  
  
Rose shrugged. "I knew Sportsmaster's daughters, way back when. Just curious if Artie's as much of a brat as she was then."  
  
"Bullshit."  
  
For a brief second, Rose panicked. She forced herself to roll her eyes as she drew a knife off her belt. "Her whore of a sister stole something from me. Mind if I take a crack at her?"  
  
Slade folded his arms. "Vandal Savage didn't have any luck getting her to talk. What makes you think you will?"  
  
Rose snorted, flipping the knife around in her fingers. "I used to babysit the little shit. I know how to make her squeal."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else felt personally victimized by that season finale? 
> 
> So it appears this is still a fix-it fic, but not the fix-it fic I intended? I guess. If that makes sense. Either way, sorry this is so late, I needed a little time to step away from the fandom and recover. But, in the immortal words of Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
> 
> And with that, on with the fic!

Dinah took a sip of her iced tea, eyes never leaving Roy's. "You haven't heard from him at all?"

Roy shrugged defensively, his left hand curled around his coffee mug. "Not since he was at Ollie's last," he said, which wasn't a lie. He didn't have to have spoken to Red Arrow to know what was going down. "Why?"

Dinah shrugged. "He usually calls once a week, and he hasn't for the last two. Given what's happened recently, we're just worried about him."

Unable to restrain himself, Roy rolled his eyes. "He's an adult, Dinah, I think he can take care of himself. He doesn't need a chaperone."

A tiny, grim smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. "So he is going somewhere."

"If you think you're going to get me to tell you where he's going, you can forget it." Not that Roy actually knew where his clone was going, but it couldn't hurt to bluff.

Dinah looked at him sadly. "Roy--"

"No, not _Roy_ , Dinah," he snapped. "Red Arrow is fine. He is an adult hero with more experience than anyone else on the Team, and if he wants to investigate Artemis's capture on his own, that's his deal, not yours."

She leaned forward, her forearms folded on the table. "I agree. He _is_ an adult, but even adults need a backup plan. We just want to keep him from getting hurt. Or worse."

Roy glanced at his right elbow, concealed under the thick sleeve of a grey souvenir hoodie. The screw that held the joint together wasn't especially visible, just a bump that could easily be mistaken for a fold in the fabric, but Roy was painfully aware that it was there. He swallowed thickly and looked back up to see Dinah watching him intently. "He's fine," Roy insisted, wrapping his left hand around his coffee cup and lifting it like a shield between them. "And anyway, if there's a chance that Artemis was still alive, wouldn't you want _someone_ to be trying to bring her home?"

Dinah lowered her gaze with a tired, sad sigh. "I would love to believe that she'll come back, Roy," she said, and for the first time in recent memory, she didn't sound like a therapist or a mentor, calm and collected and trying to soothe someone into not doing something stupid. "I miss her more than you know. But I can't lose Red Arrow on top of losing her, I... I just can't. That's not a choice I can make."

Hesitantly, Roy reached across the table with his right hand, the prosthetic curling around her hand with the near-soundless scraping of metal on metal as the fingers moved. "He'll be fine, Dinah," he reassured with a lame smile. "They'll both be home before you know it."

She smiled back, a tired, bitter thing that looked like it might crack her face with the strain. "Your optimism is admirable, if a little misguided, I think." She glanced at her phone and sighed. "I need to get back to work. You wanna come say hi to the guys?"

Roy shrugged. "Aren't they under scientific house arrest? I thought Virgil got visitation privileges in three months if he behaved."

"Roy."

He held up his left hand in surrender. "Alright, fine, maybe that wasn't fair. But I don't have to approve of the League giving my friends the shaft."

"We're not _giving them the shaft_ ," Dinah argued. "We're trying to train them to use their abilities, in a safe place where they can't hurt themselves, or anyone else."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever." He leaned over the table, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. "Listen, I fought beside those kids for four months. They can control their powers, about as well as I can control my arm. Just because you refuse to trust anyone younger than you with being able to handle themselves in this business, doesn't mean we can't."

Dinah frowned. "That's bullshit, and you know it. You worked with the Team--"

Roy scoffed. "The _Team_ is a glorified daycare program. Keep the sidekicks from hurting themselves."

"Yes, because you guys are stronger in numbers, just like the Justice League is. I don't know what I have to say to get you to believe me." Her face was unusually earnest, desperate for him to understand.

He folded his arms, the fingers of his good hand rubbing nervously at the fabric over his mechanical elbow. "Can I come visit the guys," he asked finally. Dinah smiled, a razor's edge between encouraging and relieved.

"Of course. I think they'd all appreciate that."

* * *

"Bart, kiddo."

Reluctantly, Bart looked up from Jaime's hand and turned to the open door. He blinked at the redhead staring at him with a tiny, grief-stricken smile. "Granddad, when'd you get here?"

Barry let the door close behind him and pulled a chair away from the corner. "Iris hadn't heard from you in a few days, sent me after you. How's he doing," he asked, nodding to the unconscious teenager.

Bart shrugged and rubbed the back of Jaime's hand. "Same old, same old. I guess there's a bioelectrical someone-or-other who they're trying to pull in, but I guess he's all the way in Iceland doing something more important, so there goes that."

"Where'd you hear that?"

Bart grimaced. "Can I play the plausible deniability card?"

Barry chuckled. "I swear, you're like Wally as a fifteen-year-old all over again."

"Heh, yeah." Bart was quiet for a long moment. "Wally doesn't like me around very much, does he?"

"Now where would you get an idea like that?"

Bart shrugged. "I don't know. Seems like he's gone the second I show up, never wants to talk to me."

"Aw, kiddo. Wally's just stressed out right now, and it has so little to do with you it's not even funny." Barry sighed. "You didn't get a chance to meet Artemis, did you?"

Wordlessly, Bart shook his head.

"You heard what happened though, right?"

"The whole undercover agent thing?" Bart wrinkled his nose. "I just heard they hadn't found her yet. Doesn't mean she's dead."

Barry sighed and looped an arm over Bart's shoulders. "The people who captured her... The likelihood that they'd let her live this long is slim. I know you understand that, Bart, you really don't have to play dumb."

Bart tucked his head under Barry's chin, his hand pulling Jaime's toward the edge of the bed with the change in position. The muted beeping of the heart monitor stretched in the quiet space like taffy. "When I was...eleven, I think I was then, I stole a couple coats out off what used to be a department store, I think. At that point it was a goods exchange, kinda like that swap meet Grandma Joan took me to a couple months ago, except everyone was starving and there were Reach patrols everywhere. But anyway, I jacked a couple coats so I could sell them on the black market, get some extra stuff I needed, y'know? And stupid me, I got caught and hauled off to reeducation center. It was a dumbass mistake, I kinda deserved it." He laughed bitterly, a low, hard chuckle in the back of his throat.

"And so I get to this reeducation center," he continued, "and there's this kid. I think his name was...Jai, maybe? I forget. You know, one too many untreated concussions from running into shit. But anyway, this guy's like, sixteen, been there for-freaking-ever. And this one day, this guard was giving me a hard time,  nothing I didn't expect would happen. I'm jailbait, I get that. And Jai comes up, and starts trying to shove this guard off of me. Shouts at me to book it, but of course I just kinda sit there like a moron staring at them."

Bart took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice from taking on the high-pitched, borderline-hysterical tone it always did whenever he got upset. "And the guard just...shoots him. Like he got bored and was turning the toy off. And he turns to me, and... I thought... I _hoped_ he was going to shoot me, too. But he doesn't. He just kinda brings at me, and walks off to go torment somebody else." He brushed the cuff of his sweatshirt sleeve across his eyes, futilely trying to make it seem like the memory hadn't been enough to make him start crying. "But yeah, I get it. People like that aren't likely to let her live very long. But there's a chance, in my opinion a very significant chance, that she's still out there."

Barry didn't say anything, but he shifted in his chair and his other arm came up to fold his grandson in a tight hug. "Bart, I'm so sorry," he whispered. After a moment, Bart's free arm slid around his waist. His shoulders trembled under Barry's forearm, even though Barry couldn't hear anything but the machines around the bed. Bart took a long, shuddering breath, and moved so his forehead rested against the side of Barry's neck.

"Granddad?"

"Yeah?"

"I really hope Artemis is okay."

Barry sighed. "You and me both, kiddo."

* * *

There was a very good reason Jade hadn't called home in over a year.  In her mind, she could hear her mother, pleading and accusatory by turns, and Jade's Vietnamese was rusty at best anyway. Jade stared at the burner cell phone in her palm and glanced around the train car, trying one last time to find any excuse not to call. After a minute, she sighed, adjusted her shawl like she was going into battle, and dialed the number that hadn't changed in twelve years.

"Hello?"

Jade pasted on a weak, nervous smile. "Hi, Mama, it's me."

There was a moment of breathless quiet, and then her mother's voice returned, so close to calm and collected that Jade doubted anyone but her daughters could tell the difference. "Jade, it's so good to hear from you. I just... Ahem, well. For a second, you sounded like your sister."

Jade closed her eyes and tried to breathe normally. "Yeah, Mama, I know I do. Always have, remember?"

"Yes, yes, of course." She cleared her throat again, and Jade could just barely hear the click of the  wheelchair rolling over the strip that separated the kitchen tile from the carpet. "To what do I owe the pleasure, _con gái_?"

"I need to get a hold of Dad," Jade said. No sense beating around the bush.

There was another second's silence, and Paula's voice came back icier than before. "Are you asking permission? You're a grown woman, you can call him yourself if you like. I won't stop you."

Jade took a deep breath to steady herself. "No, Mama, I don't know how to get a hold of him. I haven't seen him in months." She paused, before reminding her, "He wasn't at the funeral, remember?"

Paula sighed. "I haven't forgotten," she said, equal parts tired and sour.

"And you always know how to contact him. You _don't_ , and I understand why, but you have always known how to get his attention." Jade considered her options, and decided the "cards on the table" approach always won points with her mother. "It's about Artemis. I... I don't think she's dead."

Paula's voice came back after a choked second, hardening to the same commanding tone Jade remembered hearing when her parents still worked together. "Jade Nguyen, you will _not_ lie to me."

"I'm not lying," Jade rushed, trying to pack as much earnest, desperate hope into each syllable as she could. And to her surprise, there was such a depth of _wanting_ this to be true, wanting her sister back, that it didn't feel like as much of a con as she thought it was going to. "Roy called me, told me that Artemis was undercover for the Justice League in Black Manta's fleet. She apparently was discovered and captured, but she could still be _alive_ , Mama. I wouldn't lie about something like this, not to you."

"Even if this were true," Paula said, her voice unexpectedly feeble, "what does this have to do with your father?"

"He has access to more intel than I do. I know he probably won't help much, but I just need _names_ , anywhere I can start shaking down for information about her. I just need somewhere to start."

Paula paused to digest her daughter's words. "I will call him for you," she resolved quietly. "He may not help you, but he respects me. Don't get rid of this cell phone. I will call you back when I have something you can work with."

Jade practically melted against the leather seat of the train car. "Mama, you're a good woman," she said with a weak laugh.

"And I raised two more good women, even if neither of them believe me when I say it."

"I-- I'll call in a week with a new number if I haven't heard from you," Jade managed around a lump in her throat. "Love you, Mama."

"I love you too, _con gái_. Be safe, please. I would much rather have one daughter than none at all."

* * *

Rose sneered at the limp figure chained to the wall of the cell, her arms folded over her chest. "You know, somehow I always knew you'd end up somewhere like this. Didn't have the good sense to mind her own business."

Deathstroke leaned against the wall, mask settled over his face. "Savage wants her to give up Sportsmaster," he provided, unexpectedly helpful. "She's been less than helpful so far."

Rose nodded, mostly for her father's benefit. Under the veneer of disdain and bitter triumph, her heart twisted and squeezed at every visible injury on Artemis's body. Jade would not be happy at all. "Have you thought about her sister?"

Deathstroke stilled. "Her sister," he repeated thoughtfully. “Explain.”

"The little bitch might not know where Daddy Dearest has gotten off to, but she'll probably know where Cheshire's been hiding."

"And Cheshire can most likely lead us to Sportsmaster," Deathstroke said slowly. He straightened like a man with a new mission. "I like the way you think, girlie."

Rose shrugged. Her shoulders wanted so badly to start shaking, her knees were one slip in willpower from knocking together - or collapsing entirely. Deathstroke stepped forward to nudge Artemis awake, and Rose panicked. "Let me," she said quickly, stepping in his way. "You look like you could use the break, and I could use the practice."

"I don't think--"

"Dad. Come on. It's one little interrogation session," Rose pressed. "You can trust me with that much, can't you? Go get a sandwich, have a drink, something."

Even through the mask, she could tell he was starting at her skeptically. "You seem unusually invested."

Rose cast about for an excuse. "Alright, you wanna know? Her whore of a sister cheated me out of my cut of a job about six months ago. Big job, too - could have paid my travel expenses for years. I think it's only _fair_ that I get first crack at her, and as far as I can tell, she's the only one who knows where that bitch is."

Deathstroke shrugged. "Fair enough. You want to bang your head against a wall for an hour or two, be my guest. Just don't let Savage catch you in here."

"Yeah, whatever," she said dismissively. She eased a long-held breath out through her nose and tried desperately to keep the relief out of her voice. "As soon as I know something, you'll know something."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO this is hugely late. But on the upside, I'm graduating! I am so fucking proud of myself, you have no idea. 
> 
> In addition to being the biggest relief I've ever experienced in my life, this newfound freedom will also give me a ton of freedom with which to write more of this dumb fic! I think that there's only going to be 3-5 more chapters, and then we're done! Yaaaay!

The observation room was dim, quiet, and pleasantly warm, the green-but-really-almost-white walls seeming to glow in the faint light. But as comforting as the room was clearly supposed to be, Eduardo still felt on edge. His bare feet curled into the thin rug covering the hardwood floor, his arms resting on his knees. "I'm sorry, Papa," he muttered resentfully at the camera in the corner. As usual, only silence answered him.  
  
He sighed and flopped back on the bed. The mattress didn't so much as creak as it adjusted to his weight. Eduardo held a hand up in front of his face - still shaking. Figures.  
  
Almost furtively, he glanced at the ventilation grate in the corner of the ceiling. He wanted to try, drag a chair around until he found an angle that he could see into the shaft, even just a little bit so he could get out of here. But apparently it was all well and good for the scientists (and his father, Eduardo thought bitterly) to test the limits and applications of his abilities, but even the smallest exploratory ventures he attempted himself were highly frowned upon. Hence the observation room.  
  
It was probably a small mercy they'd let him keep his own pajamas, all things considered. That was a luxury that hadn't been afforded any of them when the League had first brought them to Star Labs.  
  
The door cracked open, and Black Canary poked her head in. "Hey kiddo," she said, her smile carefully non-threatening. He scowled at it. "I brought a visitor. You feel like talking to him?"  
  
Eduardo huffed and rolled over on the bed, determined to not say a thing.  
  
Behind his back, he heard Black Canary sigh and say to someone else. "He's been this way for about a week, you can try to talk to him if you want. Otherwise I can show you where the rest of the guys are."  
  
"Nah, I'm gonna hang out with Eduardo for a while," a familiar voice said. Eduardo rolled over to see Roy grinning at him from the doorway. "If that's okay with you? If you'd rather I left you alone..."  
  
"No, no, please," Eduardo said quickly, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The lack of friendly contact was starting to get to him.  
  
Roy grinned and waved at Black Canary. "I'll come invade your office in a little bit," he promised.  
  
"Yeah, yeah. Just don't do anything stupid, okay?" She pointed at Roy, a seriously unamused expression an her face. "I'm trusting you to be the responsible adult here. Don't let me down."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," Roy said, pulling the door in between them. "Hey, Ed. How's solitary?"  
  
"Am I glad to see you," Eduardo said. He threw his arms around Roy, eager for the human contact. "I'm starting to get a little hyperactive."  
  
"Energy build-up," Roy asked. When the Runways had first banded together, Eduardo had been reluctant to use his powers, but the build-up of the energy he used to teleport made him anxious and hyper. Eduardo nodded, frowning miserably. "C'mon, let's go blow off some steam."

"Can we do that?"  
  
Roy scoffed. "Sure we can. Dinah left the door open for us. Let's go see if the physical therapy gym is open."  
  
"Physical therapy gym?" Eduardo followed uncertainly, looking around as Roy lead the way out into the hall.  
  
"Yeah. I spent a lot of time there when I lost my arm. It's a good place to burn off some steam - built to withstand very frustrated metas, so no worries about breaking things."  
  
"You're _sure_ we won't get in trouble?"  
  
"I might, but you won't. Promise. This is all my idea." Roy lead them up to an elevator and pressed the call button. "So how is the Gitmo of the scientific community treating you? Other than solitary confinement, that's not cool and I'll be filing a complaint about that with the management."  
  
Eduardo shrugged. "It's not so bad. They're just trying to keep us safe. We're still a little unstable with our powers."  
  
"Bullshit," Roy scoffed. "You're no more unstable than the Team, and they're almost completely unsupervised besides Nightwing."  
  
The younger boy shuffled into the elevator as it opened. "What floor is it on?"  
  
"Sixth. It's on the north side of the building." Roy leaned against the back wall as the box started its ascent, hands resting in the pocket of his hoodie. "How are the others?"  
  
"I don't know, I haven't seen anyone but the scientists in several days. But I assume they're as unhappy as I am."  
  
"Mm, probably. Who wouldn't be?"  
  
The doors slid open to a broad, well-lit corridor. It curved around the outside wall of the building, lined in large windows that let in rivers of afternoon sun. "Down this way," Roy beckoned, leading the way down the hall. "I hope Stephanie is working today, she's totally chill about everything and she'll set up whatever you need to do. Normally I have a _major_ issue with telepaths, but she's not in your face about it so it's cool."  
  
Eduardo stuck as close as he dared - Roy had never been on for physical closeness, but being out of the observation room was opening himself up to disciplinary action, he felt. Roy seemed to catch on, and stationed himself partially in front of the younger boy when they stopped at a large reception desk.  
  
A middle-aged woman with light brown hair and generous laugh lines looked up from her computer and grinned up at them. "Well, look who it is," she said, and a wave of delight like soda bubbles washed over them. "How's everything, Roy? Haven't seen you in a while."  
  
"Pretty good, all things considered," Roy said. "Think my friend Eduardo and I could get into the gym to blow off some steam?"  
  
She glanced at him, and down at her computer. "I think we might be able to manage that. Flash's grandson is on the track, so just be aware of him. What do you want me to say if Dr. Dorado comes looking for his son?"  
  
"Send him to me so I can kick his ass," Roy muttered darkly. Eduardo looked at him sharply. "What? I would totally kick his ass."  
  
The automatic doors to the right of the desk slid open, letting a tired, jittery- looking redhead out of the gym. "Arsenal," he greeted with as much false cheer as he could manage. "Long time no see, what's happening, man?"  
  
"Just getting Eduardo here out of solitary confinement for a while. You look like shit," Roy observed. "What're you doing here?"  
  
He shrugged. "Just got off Sleeping Beetle watch duty. Had to go blow off some steam. Hey, you're one of the Runaways, right? Totally crash. Name's Impulse, or Bart, whichever."  
  
Eduardo shook his hand hesitantly. "Sleeping Beetle watch duty," he repeated, looking between Roy and Bart.  
  
"Blue Beetle's scarab - the thing that gives him his armour - is actually Reach tech. It got fried when we tried to free him from Reach control, and he's been in a medical coma ever since," Roy explained. "The League has a round-the-clock watch on him to monitor for changes in his condition."  
  
"Less the League, more the Team. And speaking of, I'm tag-teaming this shift with Beast Boy, so I should probs get back. Nice meeting you, Eduardo. Come say hi sometime, Arsenal knows where the room is." He vanished in a gust of wind down the hall, a streak of red and rust brown trailing after him.  
  
Eduardo let Roy lead him into the gym, his lower lip caught in his teeth. "Blue Beetle..." he started haltingly as Toy pulled open a door to the men's locker room.  
  
"Yeah. I don't know the guy too well, only ever worked a couple missions with the guy. Sucks, what happened to him. No one deserves that."  
  
He shook his head. "No, um... I think Tye knows him. Jaime, I think he said his name was. Blue Beetle's, I mean."  
  
"Really. Huh, that's interesting. You think he'd want to see him?"  
  
"I don't know.  Maybe, I can ask. You'd be cool taking us over there?"  
  
Roy laughed. "Do you know how much an unauthorized field trip into the medical wing would piss off these fuckers? Of course I'm cool with it. C'mon, let me show you the obstacle course."

* * *

Kaldur took a faltering, unsteady step away from the wheelchair, his hand braced against the wall. He moved to take another and overbalanced, his knees buckling. A hand on his chest and the gentle, warm cushion of telepathy steadied him, and he turned to give M'gann a tired, self-depreciating smile.  
  
"Atlanteans," she tsked, grinning up at him. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"Ready to leave the medical bay," he admitted. His cheeks heated up, and he turned back to the nurse standing behind the wheelchair. "Not that your care and hospitality has been anything less than a gift," he said.  
  
He laughed, waving Kaldur off. "I hear ya. Trust me, I feel the same at the end of a shift. Miss Martian, everything he needs should be in this bag, but if you need anything or have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask."  
  
"Thank you so much," M'gann said, inclining her head with a small smile and tucking the white paper bag into her purse. "You ready to head out," she asked as the nurse retreated back into the medical bay.  
  
"Yes, though I fear it may be slow going if you intend to walk me all the way to the zeta tubes," Kaldur cautioned.  
  
M'gann laughed. "Of course I intend to, and I don't mind in the least. I'm really excited you'll be staying with us for a while - we haven't really gotten a chance to catch up." At his questioning look, M'gann raised her own eyebrows. "Dick did ask you if you'd feel comfortable staying with my uncle and I for a while, right?"  
  
"No, he didn’t, and I mean no disrespect to either you or your uncle, but I do not feel comfortable intruding on your personal space. I am sure I can find accommodations in Atlantis, though I am grateful for the offer."  
  
M'gann frowned sympathetically. "Kaldur, Nightwing and Lagaan think that Atlantis...might not be the safest place for you right now, and I think I'm inclined to agree with them. Until Aquaman formally addresses your contribution to the defense forces..." She sighed. "There's a chance that someone could potentially do you serious harm for your part in the invasion, and for your connection to Black Manta. And I don't think that's a chance I want to take. I only just got you back, I don't want to run the risk of losing you again."  
  
Kaldur paused. "I..."  
  
"I missed you, Kaldur," she said softly, and she suddenly seemed so much older, exhausted on a very visceral level. She slid her hand into the crook of his elbow and gently tugged him forward. "Please, just humor me for a little while."  
  
"Alright," he allowed, after an uncomfortable pause. "I appreciate your concern, and your hospitality."  
  
"But you think you don't deserve either." M'gann looked up at him with a sad scowl. "Kaldur, you sacrificed so much for this mission. You almost single-handedly destroyed more than half of Black Manta's fleet - to say nothing of the invasion forces! I don't know why you think you don't deserve to be coming home after all this time?"  
  
Kaldur took a deep breath, his lungs straining against the calcified lump that had become of his heart. "I hurt people, M’gaan," he said slowly. "Not just the Team, or the League - I dealt incredible damages against civilians, I collected test subjects for the Reach's experiments, I collaborated with the Light against my king and my friends. I am not... I do not deserve, as you say, to come home. Not to the place I once enjoyed."  
  
M'gann sighed. "I'm allowed to know you're wrong."  
  
Kaldur shook his head and changed the subject. "Your uncle has given his consent to this?"  
  
"Of course. He's more than happy to have you," she insisted. "And Garfield's excited to have you back too." She thought for a second and grimaced. "If he's a little too...exuberant, promise you'll let me know?"  
  
Kaldur smiled thinly. "I am sure he will not be too much for me to handle."  
  
"It's more for his benefit. He has no self-control."  
  
"He is young. We were all like him once."  
  
M'gann nodded, suddenly subdued. "Once," she agreed.

* * *

Roy shuffled into his hotel room, dumping his jacket on the bed and kicking his shoes off in the middle of the floor. He flipped the tv on and set it to BBC News - the only channel the hotel had that wasn't in Arabic. A sound byte from expert commentator G Gordon Godfrey had him rolling his eyes as he peeled his t-shirt off and retreated to the bathroom.

  
"Hi, sweetie. How was your day?"  
  
Roy pulled the collapsible crossbow off his belt and drew on the intruder stepping out from behind the bathroom door. "Jade," he muttered as she leaned against the door frame. He wasn't sure boredom was the correct reaction to his assassin ex-wife suddenly showing up in his hotel room, but he was exhausted and really, this was mundane for him.  
  
"You always greet me like that," Jade frowned, gesturing to the crossbow. "How is that a good example for our daughter on the proper way for a man to treat a woman?"  
  
"Lian isn't here, and you're not the only woman on earth, Jade. What do you want?"  
  
"For you to put the crossbow down, for starters," she said dryly, moving over to sit on the bed. She crossed her legs, and leaned back with her palms flat on the mattress.  
  
Roy snorted. "Like that'll happen. Next request?"  
  
"Fine. Be that way." She sat up and uncrossed her legs. "I received confirmation from an outside source, your hunch was correct. Artemis is still alive."  
  
Roy lowered the weapon a few inches. "Who's your source?"  
  
"Old friend of mine, ex-partner," Jade said vaguely.  
  
"And how is Miss Wilson these days?"  
  
"Fuck you," Jade snapped.  
  
Roy grinned. "Babe, you're never as mysterious as you try to be. You only have so many people you're willing to ask for something like that."  
  
She frowned. "Alright fine, I'll give you that one," she muttered. "Can you blame me?"  
  
"Not at all. What did Rose have to say?" Roy folded the crossbow again and sank into the chair across the room.  
  
"Deathstroke and Savage have her in an InterGang op center in the Caucasus mountains. It's hard to get to, well-guarded, and she's beaten half to hell, so getting her out is going to be a nightmare."  
  
"Is she inside?"  
  
Jade shook her head. "Not for long. She said they're... torturing her for our father's location. She can't hang around too long or they'll get suspicious."  
  
"Jesus christ," Roy huffed. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "And I suppose you're going to insist on coming with me?"  
  
"Much as I would love the chance to kick Savage's ass for what he's done to my family, the politics are complicated. I can't be seen within a mile of that base and still keep my (head), let alone my contract work." Jade sighed. "I'm trusting you with this."  
  
"She's just as much my family as she is yours," Roy said,leaning his elbows on his knees. "I'll bring her home, I promise."  
  
"If you die trying, I'll bring you back from the dead just so I can kill you myself."  
  
Roy shot her a lopsided grin. "Aw, babe, I didn't know you cared."  
  
"Lian needs her father, Roy," Jade insisted. "Don't do anything stupid. As much as I hate to say this, call the League. Give them the coordinates, take a team. These are not people you want to underestimate."  
  
"I'm not underestimating anyone," Roy said, holding up a hand when she frowned. "I'm not calling the League, either. This isn't exactly a sanctioned mission, and the League is more likely to haul me back to the States than actually help get her back. They're close to declaring her officially dead and stopping all searches for her."  
  
"Sons of bitches," Jade grumbled. "Well who are you calling in?"  
  
Roy shrugged. "Not sure yet. Probably Arsenal, maybe some of the others on the Team if Nightwing can spare them."  
  
"It is a sad day indeed when you're left calling on the _sidekicks_ ," Jade said, crossing her arms. "Well. I called my mom, and she said that she would help me get in touch with Sportsmaster. I figure he's the reason Artemis is in this mess, the least he can do is help get her out. Don't do anything until I hear from him - he can probably distract Deathstroke and Savage until you and whatever team you put together get Artemis out."  
  
"Will he help, though? You two don't exactly have a fantastic Daddy-Daughter relationship."  
  
"My mom can convince him. He owes her for a lot - and her children are her first priority. If everything goes the way it should, she can call in a favor and get him to help."  
  
Roy snorted and stood up. "If things had gone the way they should, we wouldn't even be dealing with this clusterfuck, and Artemis would have been home three months ago."

* * *

"Ssshhh, it's just me," Rose hissed, the door scraping shut behind her. Artemis slumped against the wall, her breathing harsh and wet and labored. Her half-lidded eyes were bloodshot, and the exposed skin on her arms, legs, and abdomen was dirty and streaked with sweat and blood. She tried to say something, but all that came out of her mouth was a hacking, sloppy cough and blood.  
  
"Easy, easy," Rose soothed, advancing slowly. "I know, your sister's trying to get you out. It'll be okay soon, I promise."  
  
Artemis coughed again and rasped, "-ad?"  
  
"My dad's gone right now, it's okay," Rose said, pulling a syringe from her pocket. "I can't do a lot," she muttered, uncapping the needle, "but this should help with the pain." She pushed the plunger to inject the morphine into Artemis's system.  
  
Artemis sighed, rough and heavy. "Why," she gasped.  
  
"Jade needs you alive," Rose said, "and besides, this is a great fuck-you to my dad. Just keep hanging on, okay?"  
  
The door opened as Rose tucked the needle back in her pocket. "Well, Deathstroke's little hell-spawn," Vandal Savage said, hands folded behind his back. "What do you think you're doing?"


End file.
